just enjoy the show
by aloxi
Summary: And so he's making out with Jade West in the half-dark auditorium, the lights never quite falling directly on them, and the next morning he effortlessly composes a song full of too-sweet notes and soft words that don't make any sense at all. JadeAndré.


André Harris isn't especially proud to say that he loses his virginity to the Wicked Witch of the West, but hey, he's a teenage musician. Since when is he proud of anything he does?

And basically it's not even romantic in the least, at least to him, but Jade West despises flowers and puppies and revels in death and demonic destruction (or something like that), so for all he knows her very life was made by their christening of the school janitor's closet when they were supposed to be doing something productive for Sikowitz in the library. Like, he doesn't even remember how they _got _in there in the first place, and he suspects it's because his mind has made an executive decision to forgo that kind of drivel in favor of much more vital memories— like Jade's hands pushing against his stomach, her black lacy bra, the heat of her thighs, and the look on her face when he pressed inside her.

When the memories don't fade to a fuzzy meaningless black after a month and a half, he finally starts worrying about what exactly he's gotten himself into.

* * *

"_What_ do you _want?_"

She's sitting by herself, like always, cross-legged at the lunch table and picking at a salad. He falls down beside her, ignoring the demand.

"How're you doin'?"

A blank look is all he gets in return, before: "Go away. _Now_."

He shakes his head; to answer her, and to clear it. There's something really _wrong _here, like deep universe-stabbing wrong, because they're sitting in the middle of school and he knows what she kisses like (hard&biting&moremore_more_) and that her breath catches whenever she actually likes something (thathe's_doing_toher) and there's a scar on her hip that looks like it had hurt badly when it happened (buthedoesn'tevenknowwhatit's_from_). People are giving them weird stares and Tori's been doing her subtle waving thing for the past five minutes, _come here now, _and he knows exactly what Jade West looks like naked and why has the planet not _exploded _yet from sheer mind-fuckery? _Why?_

This is all a little too much for his admittedly smallish brain to handle at once, and so he mutters, "I was just wondering. That's all," and hikes his bag up higher on his shoulder, preparing to leave.

And, because they don't have a love story beyond fucking all period long on school property, she lets him without sparing another glance.

* * *

Two weeks later, he slips into the auditorium an hour before school starts and makes a beeline for the piano— _practice makes perfect —_that holds memories of flashing lights and short silvery dresses and _make it __**shine**__._ It's only when a cacophony of sounds almost bring blood to his eardrums (_seriously_) that he notices Jade perched on the bench, pressing what appears to be random notes in a random order.

He lets his books slam onto the floor. "This. This… is the worst musical murder I have _ever _heard. No, no. Just… _no_."

She tilts her head up at him and glares. "We aren't all Mister Piano Man." It's only when she scoots over the slightest bit that he realizes she intends for him to, like, sit _next_ to her.

"I could teach you," he says impulsively, taking the offered place on the bench. She gives him a _look_ and he adds, "If you want."

Jade hits a white key. The loud, clear sound hums through the empty cave of a building as she turns her face to his, and for the first time he notices that she doesn't have any make-up on. It makes her seem, if possible, even paler; there are dark smudges beneath her eyes. "That's not what I want," she murmurs, lifting her leg so she can twist and slide onto his lap in a way that really shouldn't be so seductive (but then, oh yeah— she's had practice). He grips her waist automatically, feeling that weird blend of human heat and cold Jade fill up his palms.

"Whatever you want," is what he ends up saying, not exactly sure how the words got decided on in the first place, and then they're kissing and kissing and her shirt ends up on the dusty floor and this time when he thrusts inside of her she lets out a short, shaky moan that sends his brain reeling and for the rest of the day he can feel the crescents on his shoulders that her fingernails leave littered there like fallen stars.

(And now that damn piano is never dreams&sweetvoices&victoriavega— now whenever he looks at it, there's nothing but _Jade_.)

* * *

Basically, he's friends with Tori, which means he's friends-by-default with Beck, which makes everything awkward to the seventy-sixth degree. To him, anyway, because he's pretty damn sure Beck has no idea he and the guy's ex-girlfriend have— well, that they _have. _

"Dude," Beck says one morning, twisting his non-mountain-stream-bottled-water around and around on the stairwell. "D you talk to Jade, at all?"

He pauses. "Sometimes." Neutral, right? "Why? What's up?"

Beck glances at him, then shakes his head. "Nothing. I just… you don't date someone for two years," he says thoughtfully, "and ever really stop wondering how they are."

It sounds, he thinks privately, like a phrase from some teen girl's The Slap page graphic, made up of glittery letters and captioned with lots of hearts. But then Tori shows up, her steps and her hair bouncing and all shiny looking even in the harsh fluorescent lights, and she kisses Beck on the cheek and the rest of the conversation is a big pile of giggles and sweet words.

Ten minutes into homeroom, he wrangles Jade's number out of Cat and texts her. And really, he can't say he's all that surprised when she's curled in one of the empty chairs in the auditorium at lunch; can't say he's all that shocked when she pushes him against the stage and kisses him so violently he actually worries about a mark. This is Jade West, after all. She's the person _angry _was created to describe.

The third time they're together, mediocre lights dimmed even more than normal, she squirms with every move of his hips, her hair sticking to her shoulders, and for the first time she's moving _back. _And when he feels her clench around him, the pressure matching that of her fingers digging into him like she's desperately afraid to fall, he draws himself out of his pleasure for one half second to catch the look on her face when she finally lets herself _go_.

Later at home, fingers to black&white keys and head full of Jade, he finally begins to doubt the capability of music to capture such a blinding moment.

* * *

Tori catches him staring at her the next day in study hall.

"What?" she asks, shifting around in the circle of Beck's arms (—_in my __**victory**__—_). "Oh, Jade."

She's buying a water not even twenty feet away. Her black shirt drapes over her shoulders, which are in fact surprisingly slim when he's holding them tightly to draw her closer, and he looks at Beck's hands on Tori and the latter girl's smiling happy face and something in his middle literally drops.

"I'll catch ya later," he says, and leaves the sunshine-and-rainbows couple staring at his back as he all but runs out of the room.

* * *

There's no Jade at the piano that lunch period, which he thanks various gods for because there's no way in hell he could compose with her _right there._ The potential for mockery is too great for even him to stomach.

His fingers find the keys like they're the candles to his blackout. A melody comes forth after a while, but it's tugged out of him, fought every step of the way with _what next, what __**next**__? _A half hour later the lunch dismissal bell has long since chimed, but whatever he has Sikowitz again this period, who cares about missing a lot of lectures about the theory of robot emotion when this song is still a pile of little more than chiz? All it's got is a cheesy opening he must have stolen from some C-list movie and lyrics that sound cringingly awkward no matter how he words them.

Finally, his hands simply come slamming down onto the delicate keys, and the resulting shriek of ruptured sound echoing through the room is almost-but-not-_quite_ loud enough for him to block out the _failure_.

"Well. Maybe it's a good thing I didn't take you up on those lessons."

Jade is standing below the stage, hands on her hips. He blinks at her, mind still full of ringing notes and stupid words. With a roll of her eyes, she swings herself up onto the stage too.

"Everything sounds bad," he blurts out when she crosses over to him, boots clicking on the wood, and hops onto the hood of the piano. Jade doesn't bother looking at him as she falls onto her back and then rolls over to the side, close enough to run one finger down every key.

The noise is calmingly sweet, and he closes his eyes. When he opens them Jade is on her back again, gravity molding her loose shirt against her. "Play," she instructs, gaze at the ceiling.

Unsurely, he presses out another tentative melody. It's not any better than before, the notes still run all over each other and fit together like a chewed up jigsaw puzzle, but this time when he's ready to simply pound on the keys in sheer frustration (_why is it notnevernot __**good enough**__—_) Jade is watching him the second his focus isn't on the music. If you can even call it that.

"Maybe you need a point of comparison," she muses. Suddenly she's on her stomach, facing him. Her fingers find the black keys, striking them wherever she apparently sees fit, and it's only a few moments until he clasps his hands over hers in an effort to stop this _madness. _Isn't Tori the one who's supposed to _suck_ at instruments?

"Girl, pianos do not deserve this kind of abuse."

Jade raises her eyebrows, locking in place by his grip. Their faces are much too close; he can see all the shades of blue and grey that make up her eyes.

"Feel better?" she asks sardonically, wriggling her fingers where they're trapped beneath his, hot on the piano keys and kind of almost intertwined.

Time stretches and then slows down when he leans forward and kisses her— stretching for the length it takes for him to make the decision to do so, slowing enough to give her time to move away like he's 76% sure she's going to.

She doesn't. But she does keep her eyes wide open, until his tongue parts her lips, anyway, and they finally flutter closed, unable to keep worrying about the things around them any longer. And so he's making out with Jade West in the half-dark auditorium, the lights never quite falling directly on them, and the next morning he gets there two hours early and effortlessly composes a song full of too-sweet notes and soft words that don't make any sense at all.

He's still playing with aching fingers when Cat finds him just before the bell rings. She gushes over his 'super-pretty song' all through Sikowitz's class, so much mind-numbing chatter that he almost doesn't notice Jade staring out the window. The sunshine is so brilliant from his angle that the faint smile on her face is almost lost in a haze of light.

* * *

Three days later, he sets a cup of coffee in front of her at lunch after a panicky few minutes at the cart trying to remember the mantra she'd repeated to Beck at least a million times (_—one sugar? milk, two sugars? black? cream, no sugar, pixie dust, god why the __**hell **__wasn't he ever listening—_).

She gives the cup a cursory glance, something he considers vaguely nice by her standards (which fit absolutely no one else), but then it's ruined when she sweeps it to her other side, off the table and into the garbage.

"Bye," she says, and goes back to her salad.

* * *

Three days after _that, _she shows up at his front door with no explanation for how she'd gotten his address and no words beyond "Let me_ in." _And because he's just that accommodating he obliges, thank _God _his parents aren't home (you know, _ever_, it makes this whole teenage rebellion thing a lot easier, really), and for the first time they have sex in an actual bed instead of pressed up against a wall or on a tiny piano bench.

And this time, just because he _can_, he decides to take advantage of the fact that he's got a naked girl in his room at five in a stormy afternoon. His shades are open, the sky tinting everything blue as he presses his mouth everywhere just to see what it feels like, tastes like. The unexpected result of this is that by the time he parts her legs, she's shaking.

"Just _fuck _me," Jade demands, too pale against his sheets, her hips arching up to him. Lightning flashes somewhere beyond the clouds (how very cliché).

"On my own time." He's teasing, which is weird because they don't _tease, _but it's forgotten when a second later he's testing out the effect of his tongue between her legs and trying to catalogue the taste of her that doesn't seem to have any real match. Minutes or hours or days later, between three crashes of thunder and another flash of cracked heat in the quickly-darkening sky, her whole body tenses and she makes this high sweet noise in the back of her throat, her thighs trembling.

When he moves beside her so they're face to face, rain dropping onto the window pane, she takes a shaky breath and rolls away.

"What—"

"No one else," she says, her voice splitting down the middle and her eyes shut tight, "is supposed— to make me _feel_—like _that_."

The words smack of betrayal but he doesn't know who it's meant for— him or Beck or maybe just herself. "Jade," he says, reaching out to run a hand down her arm because he really has no idea what to do if it doesn't involve a keyboard or a guitar or a drum set. She jerks away, grabs at her clothes, and they're in _high school, _dammit, isn't this supposed to be all _fun _and _carefree_?

"I've got to go," Jade tells him, blatantly lying, and he knows it.

But they still don't have a love story, not even in the slightest, so he honestly doesn't think to stop her.

* * *

Then suddenly it's Valentine's Day and they have a showcase that day to celebrate and he plays some stupid love song that everyone thinks is meant for Tori. He gets lots of sympathetic looks from the female population of Hollywood Arts, a few claps on the shoulder from likeminded but less obvious guys, and Jade doesn't show up at all.

He's kind of relieved.

She probably would have punched him.

* * *

"Seriously?"

She tries to duck around him, which should be easy in an empty hallway, but he blocks it enough times that finally she huffs, clutching her books tighter.

"I want to talk to you," he says.

She smirks. "Well, I'm not in the mood for fucking right now, so you can quit being Officer Dickhead and move the hell out of my way."

A short, half-irritated breath escapes him. "One, do you _have_ to call it that—"

"_Pardon _me. I am not of the right frame of mind to make love in a field of roses and unicorns." Her foot taps against the floor. "Better?"

He just shakes his head, plows on. It's better not to be baited, he's learned. "Two, I don't want… that. I just want to talk."

She stares blankly.

"You know. As in, let's hang out."

It takes a moment, during which the ridiculous little piece of hope he's been lugging around rises to huge, dumb proportions, but then she laughs. "Um. How about not?"

And God, he _really _shouldn't feel so— so— _lyrics, _he thinks, to try and escape the humiliation she's for sure going to heap on him, but none come. Nothing fits.

(That's kind of becoming a pattern with her, he notices.)

"Dude." She steps closer, close enough to kiss. "I swear, if this turns into… if you start _liking…_" And she laughs, and this is what he wants to say: Is that really so funny? Why couldn't I like you? Why don't you _want_ me to? Do you still love—

His thoughts get cut off by her scoff. By the time he manages to look up, she's halfway down the hall. He watches until she slams through the double doors, but she doesn't look back.

* * *

Basically, he's kind of a total moron.

He's sitting at the piano, again, before school starts, because this is the only place he can _think_. Except the songs usually write themselves, it all flows so easily, from words to melody to tune and back again, but Jade freaking West keeps superimposing herself over _everything_.

Also, Beck and Tori were making out yesterday at lunch.

Also, Jade hasn't talked to him in eight days.

(He's being such a _chick, _**seriously**_._)

Motionless on the bench, he wonders if being _not-good-enough _is something that eventually spills into every part of your life. (_Write the song, write the song, __**writethefreakingsong**__—_) Then he thinks of Jade's face whenever she watches Tori and Beck and he figures it must, at the very least, _feel _like it does.

He presses the keys randomly until something like music pours out.

It kind of reminds him of Jade.

* * *

Two days later, Beck and Tori break up.

Four days later, Beck buys Jade a cup of coffee at lunch. She pours it on him (_de ja vous, _much?), and he feels a little bit superior.

Then he sees them sucking face in the hallway and kind of wants to puke. Just a little.

* * *

So then Tori calls him and she sounds nervous and he can hear Trina screaming about something in the background, and just when he's about to try and steer her toward the point (because this is Tori Vega, you have to do things **gently**) she finally blurts, "Do you wanna see a movie? Saturday? Possibly? …With me?"

He blinks. Holds the phone a _littlebit_ tighter. "Uh— sure. Okay, yeah. What do you wanna see?"

Her voice is breathlessly high when she launches into a spiel about their possible cinema adventures, and, okay, it's totally cute, he has to admit. Really.

They're _officially _dating by Monday, which, by the way, is the day Beck absolutely doesn't speak a word to him. Jade rolls her eyes subtly, like, _what can you do, sorry he's pissed that we fucked a few times. _

He wonders, vaguely, if he should tell Tori. Maybe if they ever… _yeah_, but that's a long way off, he's sure, so for now it's... he and her... their... _thing._ It's staying between he, Beck, and Jade.

* * *

Tori is ridiculously easy to please. It's kind of cool.

(Also, she pats his shoulder sweetly when his music just _sucks, _and she says "It's just an off day" and kisses him on the cheek.)

At the next big showcase, he plays the piano _(on __**that**__ bench, yeah, thanks for asking_) so loud and sings so long that his fingers shake, his voice is hoarse when he finally finishes. Tori squeals, hugs him, and he smiles back because it's _Tori. _

"That was so good," she says, shifting from one foot to the other in her short blue dress, headband accordingly colored. Her cheeks are round, eyes bright. "Did we ever kiss during a thunderstorm, though?"

She's whispering as they sit in the front row, their performances over, watching the rest. He threads their fingers together. "Might have," he says, and when the curtain rises there's Jade at center stage. It feels like a moment his English teacher would find symbolism in or something, but then she also hits on Sikowitz sometimes so it's not like he should be listening to her about, well, anything.

"Weird, but it was so—"

"Watch, chatterbox," he whispers, nudging her shoulder with his, because he and Tori, _they _have a love story. A moment later, Tori's laugh and Jade's singing voice overlap in the dark, so it's that much harder to tell which one is his.

* * *

_end._

* * *

**a/n:** guys. _guys. _why is there no jade/andré fic lighting up my life? D: i ship it. _hard_. there were even ~moments~ during this week's episode! when she's mocking his failure at picking up chicks and he's just all smileysmiles:D, AW. C'MON. oh, ALSO. working on this got me approximately ten hours of sleep over two days, so somebody tell me it was at least vaguely worth it or i'm totally falling asleep in class tomorrow no matter whaaat. xD


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